The Beauty and the Spy

by Gayle Callen

  She glanced toward the dark window, as if she were looking far off. “I missed him terribly. I have often wondered if things would have turned out differently.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe he would have seen that Aubrey Sinclair was not the husband for me.” She bit her lip and looked down at her clenched hands. “I shouldn’t be saying these things to you.”

  He sat up straighter, controlling a shiver induced by the cold water. “No, go ahead and say it. Maybe you’ve needed to.”

  She tilted her head and smiled. “But you don’t need to hear it. Suffice it to say, my mother was overjoyed when Aubrey showed his intentions, and I went along with it without questioning how well we might suit.”

  “It sounds as if your mother didn’t expect you to find a husband—which is ridiculous, with your beauty and your father’s title.”

  She blushed and looked down, smoothing out her skirt. “I think she just allowed herself to be caught up with the excitement of my first serious suitor. ‘He was a gentleman of exemplary character and fortune,’ as she liked to say.”

  “How did he die?” he asked carefully.

  Her gaze dropped to the bed, and she smoothed the coverlet. “His horse threw him into a river. He drowned.”

  “So sudden. That must have been difficult.”

  “I guess it was better than if he’d suffered.”

  He wanted to draw more from her, but then an uncontrollable shudder raced through him.

  Charlotte stiffened. “My goodness! I’ve been prattling on and you must be freezing. Should I put the screen up?” she asked doubtfully.

  “And risk coming near a naked man? No. Just turn your back. I trust you.”

  After she turned to face the wall, he quickly dried off and pulled on a clean pair of trousers. When he walked around to the side of the bed, she looked up at him. He noticed how quickly her gaze skimmed over his bare chest.

  “If you trust me,” she said quietly, “then please don’t tie me up tonight.”

  He let out a sigh. “Nothing we’ve said here changes the fact that my mission is the most important thing to me. If you don’t wish to be tied to me, we have to find another way that I can be certain you won’t escape.”

  “But this afternoon I didn’t leave you when I could have!”

  “I know. But what if you change your mind?”

  “But if I just sleep next to you, surely you’ll be able to tell if I arise.”

  “I can’t sleep next to you again.” He sat down on the opposite side of the bed, tilting the mattress dangerously toward him, so close that their knees almost touched. “I kissed you this morning. I won’t promise not to try more if you’re lying against my side.”

  He watched the blush heat her skin, and the way her gaze dipped to his mouth. She was remembering the kiss, too.

  “Then don’t kiss me,” she whispered.

  He braced his hand beside her knee and leaned closer. “Perhaps I should say the same to you.”

  Her gaze flew to his face, her lovely lips parted, but she didn’t say anything. How could she? She hadn’t immediately pushed him away when he’d kissed her. Deep down, he wondered if he could seduce away her inhibitions, show her that there was more to life than what she’d experienced in an unhappy marriage.

  “I won’t kiss you,” she said, but her voice spoiled her resolve by quivering.

  Smiling, he said, “I’m glad I’m safe from your unsavory intentions.”

  She frowned. “Don’t tease me. My situation with you is precarious, through no fault of my own.”

  “I know.”

  Taking a deep breath, she asked, “So where will you sleep?”

  “I’ll put a chair near the door.”

  “But you refused to do that last night.”

  He reached toward her and tucked a long curl behind her ear. “Last night I didn’t know the bed would be worse.”

  This was dangerous. Charlotte was a woman who could test his resolve as perhaps no other ever had. He could read every emotion on her face, and he wondered how she would look if he was inside her.

  He pulled back and stood up. He had to reerect a small barrier between them.

  “I want you to remove your clothes. You’ll be less likely to try to escape in the night—and if you do, I’ll be more likely to hear you.”

  He waited for her outrage, but the expression on her face remained almost calm. She rose slowly to her feet, the bed between them. He looked about, wondering what was nearby that she might throw at him. Or did she mean to go behind the screen?

  But then her fingers went to the buttons at her throat, and she started opening them.

  What the hell?

  Nick’s uneasiness intensified. There was something wrong. Her face looked almost blank, resigned, as if she weren’t really aware of what she was doing, where she was. Her dress parted farther and farther over her bodice, as the tight material finally sagged with relief. He could see her chemise now, but it was cut low over her chest, as if it had been the one she’d worn under her ball gown.

  She had to pull hard to tug each sleeve down, and he wondered if she’d have marks on her skin from how tight everything was. And she’d never complained a bit.

  But she wasn’t saying anything now. The dress fell to the floor in a pile, and she began untying the petticoats at her waist.

  She was undressing for him, but it was far from provocative.

  He couldn’t look at her blank expression anymore. He came around the bed and took her hands when she would have reached for the neckline of her chemise.

  “No, Charlotte, you can stop now.”

  The emptiness in her face began to fade away as she looked up at him. “Nick?” she whispered, sounding so confused.

  Something in his chest began to ache as he looked into her frightened eyes. “That’s enough, Charlotte. I didn’t mean—I only meant your outer clothes. Sleep in your chemise.”

  She took a sudden, deep breath and stepped away from him. “That wasn’t very nice,” she said, projecting sternness over the quiver in her voice.

  He began to relax as color blossomed in her pale cheeks. “You’re right, it wasn’t. I should have explained myself better. Now get into bed and go to sleep. We should hear from Sam tomorrow, and it might be a busy day.”

  As he watched her slide beneath the light sheets, he thought about her behavior. She’d begun to remove her clothes at just a suggestion, as if she’d done this before and it hadn’t ended pleasantly.

  What kind of man had she married? Or had something else happened to her that he didn’t know about? Hell, he didn’t know much about her at all, and he shouldn’t be so curious to find out.

  Yet he didn’t want her dwelling on the hurt she’d suffered in life. A depressed hostage was far worse than an angry one. But how to distract her?

  After turning down the lamp and dragging a chair near the door, he sat down and leaned his head back, thankful at least for the high back and the armrests. But he knew sleep wouldn’t come easily, for in the shadowy darkness he could still see his hostage.

  It took a long time before Charlotte finally felt some of her tension dissolve away.

  What had happened to her?

  Was mention of her husband’s name enough to resurrect the ghost of her old response to him?

  And that’s what her behavior had been, a response she’d long been used to having when given an order to remove her clothes.

  Would she have just kept going if Nick hadn’t stopped her? What else would she have done in that trancelike state?

  She covered her face with a pillow out of embarrassment. She would not let herself respond to a man’s command like that again. Her old life was finished, and she had embarked on a new one, where she stood up to kidnappers and fought back as best she could.

  Now if only she could stop these feelings of attraction that made it hard to think when she was around him. With frustration she tossed the pillow onto the end of the bed.


  “Can’t sleep?” said Nick’s deep voice out of the darkness.

  She drew in her breath on a gasp. “You startled me.”

  “Sorry. Sleep is eluding us both, I gather.”

  He hesitated, and she found herself listening for his voice in the silence.

  “So would you like to talk?” he asked.

  She closed her eyes against the darkness and wished she could will herself to sleep. “About what?”

  “Well, you started an interesting subject this morning about having—what was your word?” He chuckled. “Ah, yes, relations.”

  She felt her face flush. “I did not talk about us having relations!”

  “I didn’t say us, now did I? You’ve revealed how your mind works.”

  Mortified, she rolled onto her side, away from him. “Go to sleep.”

  “Now, now, don’t get all upset with me. So, very well, you talked about men having relations, and how to a woman such a thing is treated with—reverence? Was that your word?”

  She groaned and pulled the pillow over her head again.

  “Perhaps now that you’re a widow,” he continued, “you should remind yourself that sex—how crude of me to refer to it correctly—is also a union of pleasure.”

  If he wanted her curiosity, she would give it to him. “And do you not worry that you might accidentally get the woman…with child?”

  “There are ways to safeguard against that.”

  She was shocked. “There are?”

  “Aren’t you the innocent.”

  She looked up into the darkness, where she could see nothing, including Nick. She felt bold, even reckless—and consequently didn’t trust herself. “I don’t wish to hear such things.”

  She heard his soft laughter. “Don’t you want to play the merry widow?”

  “No!”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” he said, soothing and teasing her at the same time. “Sex is for begetting children. And that’s the only reason to be married, correct?”

  “No, I—” She broke off, confused by the turn in the conversation. “I never said that.”

  “But you said you didn’t give your husband an heir, and that’s all he wanted.”

  She frowned. “Maybe.”

  “But is that all you wanted in a marriage? Children?”

  “I guess not.”

  “But it was all your husband wanted,” he said softly.

  There was a long, awkward silence while she tried to understand why this made her so sad, that her husband had only wanted children from her, and not any other relationship. Most couples lived separate lives, with little in common. Had she expected—hoped—to be different?

  “Good night,” she said firmly.

  Charlotte climbed out of the depths of sleep and rolled over. The room was bathed in sunlight, and the smell of ham and eggs made her stomach gurgle. She stretched away her stiffness, arching her back and sighing. She glanced at the window, only to see Nick watching her with an inscrutable expression.

  What must she look like? Her hair was a mass of curls and snarls, and as she looked down herself, she saw that her chemise revealed a shocking amount of her breasts. In fact an inch more to her stretch, and all her assets would have been revealed. She quickly pulled the sheet up to her chin. His lips twisted in a smile before he turned back to the window. He was looking at several sheets of paper in his hand.

  She wrestled with her neckline until it was as respectable as possible, then she climbed out of bed. Breakfast was laid out on the little table, and although it was obvious he had eaten some of his, he now seemed very preoccupied. She pretended her chemise was a nightgown—as if that was any better!—and after throwing a blanket around her shoulders, tiptoed toward the window, craning her neck to see what he was reading.

  “It’s a letter,” he said over his shoulder.

  She stumbled to a halt. “Oh. I will admit I was curious. Was this just delivered? I guess I was sleeping deeply.”

  “You were. Cox brought us breakfast, and you never knew. But no, I’ve had this for quite some time. Julia Reed’s former accomplice, Edwin Hume, the one who is willing to testify against her, sent this to me. It’s the way Julia gave secrets to our enemies.”

  She peered over his arm. In the sunlight the paper was so bright, she couldn’t make out the exact words. “Her penmanship is rather poor.”

  “Like yours?”

  “I was in a moving carriage,” she reminded him, hoping he believed her.

  “Then unlike you,” he said, with a touch of sarcasm, “Julia wrote the letter this way quite deliberately. Can you see a pattern?”

  “A pattern?” To her surprise he handed her the letter, and she lifted it nearer to read. It was addressed to someone named Helen, and seemed a simple account of what Julia had been doing at a market fair in Kabul. “Where is this strangely named village?”

  “In Afghanistan. Julia’s brother, General Reed, was the head of a division of the army of the East India Company. Their parents are dead, and she’d been traveling with him for several years. There were quite a number of families in our encampment on the plains below the city.”

  Charlotte studied the letter closely, seeing that Julia had even turned the paper and written up the sides of the margin. She hadn’t noticed originally, but now she saw that Julia’s penmanship wasn’t poor. But there were plenty of stains and blots of ink, as if she were in too much of a hurry. She’d even randomly filled in the loops, perhaps scribbling while she collected her thoughts.

  “There are drops of ink everywhere,” she said. “If Julia wasn’t flinging her pen about, then I don’t know how she did this.”

  “Exactly,” Nick said with satisfaction. “Although it looks random, it isn’t. Every mark on the letter is part of a code. This was how she told our enemies about the strength of our forces.”

  She squinted at the paper. “I must confess, I see nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t have either, if not for Edwin Hume. He knew I was trailing Julia and him. He sent me word that he fears she means to kill him. He included this letter, and promised me the second letter, to use as proof against Julia. He demands our protection in exchange for this.”

  “But how is the second letter proof?”

  “Julia sent two letters, by two different routes.” He held the letter between them, and they both bent over it, their heads close together. “You notice that if the letters are intercepted, there is nothing suspicious to condemn her. But once the two letters are side by side, you use the second letter to figure out the code. That will be part of our treason case against her.”

  “Part?”

  “We have other evidence.”

  When Nick didn’t elaborate, she asked, “To whom did she betray England?”

  “The Russians. Afghanistan is a buffer between Russia and British India. Much of my mission was keeping track of what Russian agents were doing, and how the various monarchies of countries were receiving them.”

  “And these hostile countries—they just let you sneak about?”

  “Of course not.” He grinned down at her, and she saw his gaze drop to her chest, where the blanket had sagged a bit. “I’m very good at…blending in.”

  His statement was very innocent, but somehow she had thought he was going to say something else. Her blood had heated before the words could even come out of his mouth. What did she want him to be very good at?

  “And my father coordinated all this?” she asked, bringing up a topic she knew would refocus them both.

  He straightened. “Especially for three of us.”

  Three of them, she thought, remembering the men most often mentioned in her father’s journals. Everything Nick was saying corresponded to what she had read. How could she know what the truth was? Goodness, he could have merely been in the army, and still know enough to fool her.

  “Why don’t we eat?” he said.

  She watched him put the letter away in a flat leather pouch that he slid insid
e his portmanteau. Then he sat down in a chair and turned to watch her approach with a bit more attention than she felt necessary.

  “I’ll dress first,” she said, disappearing behind the screen with her own bag.

  When she was covered well in the drab brown dress, she returned to the table and sat down opposite Nick.

  He glanced at her. “Are you terribly uncomfortable in the garments Sam brought you? I regret he didn’t choose the size well.”

  “It is manageable. They seem to stretch a bit as I wear them.”

  “Understandable,” he said dryly, and again she watched his gaze roam her figure.

  She cleared her throat and cut her first bite of ham. “So tell me about the countries you’ve worked in. The only long journey I’ve taken was to Scotland.”

  He told her about the Afghani mountains which towered so high they made Cumberland look like lowlands. He talked about fierce winters and hot summers, where one couldn’t escape the elements. But her favorite part was listening to him talk about how the people lived.

  It was all so foreign to anything she’d ever heard before. How could he be making it all up?

  He was leaning toward her, smiling with intense interest in his subject, seeming so relaxed and civilized. His demeanor had changed much in just the last day. She should probably be suspicious.

  “You know,” she said, when the conversation lulled, “I have noticed something about you.”

  “What?”

  “You try very hard to portray this inflexible, hard man that no one should cross.” She leaned even closer, feeling bold, daring. “But I think it’s not true.”

  He frowned.

  “It’s almost like another part you play in this spy game.”

  There was a sudden knock on the door. Both of them straightened, but from his expression, she knew Nick wasn’t done with her.

  Chapter 10

  Coercion involves more than the threat of force.

  The Secret Journals of a Spymaster

  Nick raised his voice as he emulated an army clerk who used to irritate the hell out of him. “Who is it?”

  Sam answered, and Nick let him inside. With her eyes demurely downcast, Charlotte took a sip of her tea, but when she glanced at him, Nick frowned at her, masking his unease at her ability to see through his performance.